What's Cooking?
by Peter the Muggle
Summary: It's our favorite demon hunter's birthday and Lady, Trish and Lucia try to cook for him. Good luck Dante.
1. Chapter 1

Three women bustled inside the long unused kitchen of Devil May Cry.

A lady with two distinctly different colored was currently keeping vigil over a very charred piece of some kind of animal meat. The look in her strange eyes was akin to one watching a bomb about to go off.

"That's three pinches of salt, Trish."

The tall blonde mixing a pot of unknown liquid glared back, irritably.

"I know! I don't make the same mistake twice. I know it's three pinches….. "

"I'm thinking she is worrying about the _salt_ part…."

The third woman had red hair which was currently tied in a tight bun. She was chopping up various vegetables with great speed.

All three women were currently waiting for their colleague, a certain Son of Sparda who was coming back after three weeks spent looking for his estranged twin brother in the demon world.

It also happened to be his birthday today.

And that was the sole reason why Mary, who had never cooked in her life was burning the outside of a steak while its inside remained completely raw unbeknownst to her, unfortunately.

Coincidentally, it was also the same reason why Lucia was chopping up every random vegetable she could find and why Trish was adding three pinches of sugar to her soup.

"He'd better freakin' appreciate this." Mary coughed as her eyes watered from the smoke that the meat was producing.

"You know he does, Lady." Trish smiled wistfully as she continued to swirl the contents of her pot. It was giving off a strong acrid smell as her plastic spatula gradually wittled away from her continued stirring.

"I am not used to cooking. Matier has tried to teach me several times." Lucia had amassed an impressive amount of minced produce on her chopping board.

Trish smirked at her red-headed companion.

"So, how'd that go?"

Lucia's head drooped sadly as she continued to chop.

"That bad, eh?"

"Damn it."

Lady wrinkled her nose in disgust as she cut into the smoking piece of charred flesh on the pan.

The inside was barely cooked, still oozing blood. She turned off the stove and took off her white, butcher's apron as she walked dejectedly to the dinner table.

Trish continued to stir her soup sadly, praying that swirling the contents would somehow make the contents edible.

She took a spoon from the drawer and was about to taste it when she noticed that the plastic spatula she had used to stir the soup was missing it head.

The soup had some interesting blue specks floating around in it.

"No need to taste that.", she muttered as she made her way to join Mary.

Lucia continued to chop vegetables. She finished chopping a carrot and made a grab for another one but there was no more. There was a huge pile of vegetable confetti left in her wake. She set her knife down and went to the dinner table where she found Trish and Mary.

Mary was holding her head in her hands and muttering incoherently. Trish had her arms crossed and was looking very gloomy. Lucia tried to form one coherent sentence that would not result in them feeling more depressed than they already were

"I'm out of vegetables."

Mary didn't even bother looking up. A loud THUMP was heard as Trish's head violently crashed onto the table.

They all sighed.

Trish spoke up first.

"I told you we should've just gotten him a new sword."

"That's too impersonal." Mary's eyes were still watering from the smoke. If anything, at least her eyes matched now; they were both red.

"Oh, come on! It's not like I'm giving him an engagement ring!"

"Yeah , but another sword? Why don't we just get him another red coat while we're at it? Besides, that one you picked for him couldn't cut through tissue." ,Mary snapped.

"That's because I wanted it to be _personal_! I'm not getting him a meat cleaver for his

birthday." , Trish replied.

They both fell silent again, glaring at each other.

Lucia kept to herself, not wanting to add any further damage. They had wrecked Dante's kitchen and what was supposed to be his birthday present from all three of them was unanimously agreed upon to be utterly_ ruined._

Mary mentally berated herself for coming up with the idea for cooking Dante's dinner. This was after all the first time she would be seeing him again in about a decade. A new weapon seemed to be the most obvious choice.

Strangely, all three of them were prepared to give Dante cash for his birthday.

She didn't know about Trish or Lucia but she herself was too much of a _chicken-shit_ to give the wrong impression. Something too impersonal might hurt his feelings ,something she would NEVER admit to caring about. A personal gift on the other hand could give way to something neither of them could wrap themselves around just yet.

And so she chose _emotionlessly cold_. A few crumpled bills that amounted to about a month's worth of clients.

To her credit, Trish had chosen crisp bills for her present. Sadly, they had amounted to less than a hundred dollars. The blonde's cold indifference and professional demeanor was quite effective in hiding her rapidly growing feelings for the demon hunter.

Lucia's gift was the most personal of the three. A signed check. The young woman from the island seemed to have an almost child-like infatuation with Dante and was most eager to prove herself to him. Apparently, people on her island worshipped Dante like a god.

Talk about pressure.

At the very least, Mary was slightly comforted to find out, there were other people out there as emotionally inept as herself, possibly worse.

A few hours of waiting passed. Trish had not moved from her face-down position on the table. Lucia was sitting stiffly on a wooden chair beside the pool table. Mary was sitting cross-legged on the couch, one red boot jiggling nervously.

CREEEEAAAKKKK….

The sound of the door opening provoked different reactions from the women.

Trish's head shot up from the table. Her blonde hair was quite unkempt and stuck out in different places. It further emphasized her increasingly horrified features.

Lucia, who had been sitting surprisingly calm, flushed bright red and began to play with the hem of her shirt. She kept swallowing a lump in her throat.

Mary got up and made for the window.

"_Chicken-shit to the end…" _was her bitter thought as she tried to scramble out the fire exit.

But it was too late.

"Honey, I'm home!" , said a joking baritone voice. The white haired demonslayer paused and surveyed the area.

Several things assaulted Dante's senses at once.

First, was the smell of burnt….well, he wasn't quite sure WHAT was burning but a fire hadn't spread yet so it could wait.

Second was a very nervous aura around the apartment, like something had gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.

Third, a person was obviously trying to make an escape using his fire exit. A woman….

"_Pale skin, scarred gams, and an ass I'd remember anywhere."_

"Hey, Lady."

A/N: Something I put together early morning. I can't be sure when the next chapter will be up but I've already formed it in my head. If all goes according to plan, it should be out in a week 


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I'm really sorry for the delay guys! Sorry doesn't even to begin to describe it actually; had a lot on my plate and it was a bad timing for a two-parter. So, here it is finally! Hope you enjoy this!

Mary's stomach churned as she watched Dante eat the "meal" they had made with gusto. How he could even consider the meal edible still left her head spinning, knowing exactly how she had cooked it.

"_Failed to cook, more likely…"_, she swallowed mightily, seeing blood drip from the meat that Dante attacked heartily. She tried not to think about the various diseases one could get from eating uncooked meat.

"_Taenia solium. The pork tapeworm."_

She had heard of people waking up in the middle of the night to find that a live tapeworm three or four feet in length had crawled out of their noses. While her mother might have had good intentions in telling her that story, it had given her nightmares for weeks.

It still bothered her that he had to remember this reunion as the time when he gets at the very least, a lifelong memory of the evils of food.

She glanced over at her cohorts and they looked, well, terrible. Trish was biting her fingernails as she watched what was basically self-induced food poisoning taking place. One particularly large spoonful of her toxic soup had her drawing blood from her thumb as it went down Dante's gullet.

"_Lady's gonna pay for this…."_, was the half-hearted thought. Dante would probably never forgive her if she hurt an old friend, let alone the one who probably co-owned the naming rights to the shop she called home.

Lucia was already deciding what penance she might have to do. What would poisoning the Legendary Dark Knight amount to? She throttled and beat herself in her mind for forgetting to wash the vegetables. Matier would probably flay her alive, being particular about that particular aspect of cooking. Lucia didn't understand at first why gifts from Nature needed to be washed still. Matier, patient as always, explained that it was human's own doing that needed to be undone in the matter; _pesticides_ still lingered in the vegetable and could cause serious harm if ingested.

All three women knew that Dante was sturdy; _hell_, he was damn right **invincible**. He survived worse things than simple food poisoning. Mutilations, stab wounds and burns were probably nothing but scrapes and scratches to him.

Still, they all clearly remembered him saying that he did not enjoy getting mutilated, stabbed or burned. They still hurt like hell, just that they healed really fast.

Also, pain was something that should be expected from enemies, not allies! Least of all, in the form of a meal on the day of one's birth!

Dante let out a huge belch. His normally steely eyes were half-lidded and his posture was relaxed.

"_He's going to throw up. Any minute now."_ Mary was prepared for the worst and began to look for the possible hiding place of the mop. She also took another mental note of the fire escape. She would probably be making use of it soon.

Several minutes passed without any ill effects whatsoever. Dante had already gotten up and put his dish and cutlery in the sink and was about to head upstairs for the night before he was stopped by Mary's voice.

"That was disgusting. How could you eat that?", she half questioned and half yelled. It sounded harsher than she had intended but the shock and guilt was still in her system. Trish and Lucia looked at him, begging an answer with their eyes.

Dante smiled and went towards the three and pulled them all in a massive bear hug. All three women were flushed as he released them.

"How could I eat that? Simple; it had the _secret ingredient._ I love the secret ingredient."

With that, he left to let them ponder his words.

"What did he mean by that?" Trish was confused. Was it the melted plastic?

"We did a terrible job." Lucia had her bowed, not knowing what Dante had meant.

Mary was deep in thought.

"_**He'd better freakin' appreciate this…."**_

"_**You know he does, Lady."**_

The seemingly pointless conversation she had with Trish earlier was beginning to hold something more of value. A rare, peaceful flashback of her mother eating burnt cookies made by her when she was six years old came up.

"_**How could you eat that, Mama? It's all black and yucky!"**_

"_**Because it has the secret ingredient, my little lady."**_

"_**What's that?"**_

_**Her mother kissed her on the forehead.**_

"_Love? That's---it's not---" _

Mary's entire face burned red as she walked stiffly towards the door. Trish stared at her strangely.

"Where are you going? What's that secret ingredient he was talking about?"

Mary turned to Trish, he face still burning and tried to smile.

"See you again in another ten years. Hopefully we'll all forget by then…."

Trish could only wonder what that meant as the door creaked to a close. Lucia had gone out through the fire escape a while ago.

As she started to wash up the pots and pans that they had used, Trish noticed that their supply of detergent powder soap had gone low.

"That's weird. I just bought some yesterday…"

DMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMCDMC

Dante's eyes watered as he threw up all the contents in his stomach. Food poisoning just got to him in ways that no other form of bodily harm could. At least the girls' feeling weren't hurt. Women were touchy that way.

He was about to exit the bathroom when he saw something that made him sick all over again. He jumped out the bathroom window and ran as fast as he could to the nearest pub.

Nevan glided around the apartment, her usual gaggle of bats holding up what seemed to be a noxious black stew in a cast iron pot.

Drops of the fluid leaked as it burned through the bottom of the pot and fumes surrounded it like a gas of death. It also smelled suspiciously of a flowery fragrance, used in soap.

She had her eyes out for the birthday celebrant who was currently MIA. She could've sworn she heard his voice a while ago though.

"Dante, sweetie? Where are you? I've prepared something for your birthday!"

END


End file.
